Taking Torchwood to LA has been the highlight in a busy year for actress Sharon Morgan. She took time out from filming, writing and acting to speak to Abbie Wightwick

IT’S been a few weeks since Sharon Morgan returned from filming Torchwood in Los Angeles, but she’s still buzzing.

She filmed at Warner Brothers Studio, visited Eve Myles at her house under the Hollywood sign and had a barbecue with Ioan Gruffudd.

“I was pinching myself thinking, I cannot believe I’m here,” the actress, who lives in Cardiff, says with a laugh.

Not only was she there but found herself in the surreal situation of filming interior scenes of a house in Sketty. The exterior shots were done in Swansea earlier this year but when Torchwood relocated across the pond, interiors went with it.

“It was like some strange dream,” Sharon says.

At first she feared her character wouldn’t feature but in the fourth series of Torchwood she appears in six episodes as Mary Cooper, mother of Eve Myles’ character Gwen Cooper.

“I love the part and the series,” Sharon says.

Although the action starts in Washington and ranges across the world from Buenos Aires to Shanghai and Cardiff, the feel of it remains Welsh, she says.

“I expected to be in amazing make-up rooms but there were just trailers.

“It’s a massive studio built in 1935, with sound proofing. It’s just a big space and when you’re on set the job is the same and the procedure is the same. But it’s Hollywood and it’s just amazing.”

At one point the Bafta award-winning actress feared she might never get there.

Applying for a working visa to enter the US she was told she’d have to declare any criminal activity.

Growing up in the 1960s Sharon was an ardent Welsh language campaigner and was arrested in 1988 for daubing paint on the Welsh Office.

When she realised she’d have to state this on her visa application she worried she’d be turned down.

“I was in the office of the immigration solicitors the BBC employs and then it became mad because I had to get a police record and the head of drama at the BBC signed my photos for that,” she recalls breathlessly.

When she finally walked into the US Embassy in London to put in the visa application she was terrified.

“I thought: God, what if they say no? It’s a dream job!”

Happily the woman official looked at her and drawled, “That’s not moral turpitude” before stamping the paperwork, she recalls.

The visa was finally delivered on a Saturday ready for Sharon to fly to LA on the Monday to start filming.

As it was the Easter holidays she took 15-year-old daughter Saran with her.

“She sat on set every day and everyone was lovely to her,” Sharon says.

“They loved it when we spoke Welsh, they were fascinated.”

Saran, who wants to follow her mother into acting, was combining the trip with revising for GCSEs which kept mother and daughter grounded among the bright lights.

But each day they were among old friends before going out to explore the city.

Away from work she and Saran went to the theatre, visited the zoo and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“LA is such an odd place,” Sharon says.

“You go to a city and try to get a measure of it but LA is a huge sprawl with no centre. There’s huge disparity from Beverly Hills to Long Beach and Skid Row where there are so many homeless people.

“There’s no proper public transport. We went on the metro but it doesn’t link up. Only poor people use the metro and the city is not built for walking. You have to drive really.

“It is a weird city but it gets under your skin. It’s unique.”

Hollywood has its share of Welsh actors making a name there and one day Sharon went to a barbecue at the house of Cardiff-born actor Matthew Rhys.

Rhys, who was in the US series Brothers and Sisters, invited friend Ioan Gruffudd who has also made his home and career in Hollywood.

“Matthew’s mother was there and Ioan with his daughter,” Sharon says.

“It was like home from home. It was lovely.”

The actress, who began her acting career after university in the 1960s, feels proud to see how much things have changed. She recalls starting out in a world where actors had to break into the English theatre establishment to be successful in the US.

This could be harder if you were Welsh, especially at a time when accents other than received English were unacceptable outside character parts, she says.

“In the past you had to break into England to get to the USA, now you can bypass England. It’s partly things like the internet and we have also grown more confident. Accents are also more accepted.”

Growing up in Glanamman, Carmarthenshire, the daughter of a headmaster and a drama teacher, Sharon says she never felt she couldn’t succeed and her parents always supported her career choice.

But she still got a history degree from Cardiff University before training for the stage.

This backstop was never needed as Sharon says she has rarely been out of work in the last 30 years.

Over three decades she has appeared on stage, screen and television, been awarded a Bafta and become one of the most respected actors of her generation.

She has also written for the stage, translated plays, including The Vagina Monologues, into Welsh and has just finished her autobiography.

“I always like having five or six things on the go at once,” she explains.

“The thing about this business is you never know what’s going to happen next. That’s what I love about it.”

When she began filming Torchwood she’d just finished shooting the screen version of Owen Sheers’ novel Resistance in which she takes one of the leading roles as Maggie Jones.

The film, shot on location near Abergavenny, is due to be screened in the autumn and also stars Michael Sheen.

The film imagines an alternative end to World War II when all the men vanish from a Welsh valley and the Germans arrive.

Sharon, who has in the past lamented the lack of good parts for older women, said she enjoyed playing Maggie Jones, the strong woman, leading resistance in the valley.

Just as the film is due for release her autobiography, as yet unnamed, will be published by Y Lolfa. And while all this is happening Sharon will be putting finishing touches to her play about Welsh actress Rachel Roberts.

As someone who likes to do more than one thing at once, Sharon spent spare time in LA researching for the play which she’s writing in Welsh.

Llanelli-born Roberts, a Bafta award-winning actress who was nominated for an Oscar and two Tony Awards, is probably best known for playing the headmistress Mrs Appleyard in Picnic at Hanging Rock. She also appeared in two key films of the 1960s, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and This Sporting Life.

Despite Roberts’ success she became depressed after divorcing actor Rex Harrison and killed herself at home in LA aged 53 in 1980.

“She was so successful but lacked self belief. It was terribly sad,” Sharon says.

She hopes her play about the actress will ensure her legacy is not forgotten and that Roberts is introduced to a new generation.

“I can imagine the loneliness she might have felt,” Sharon says.

“In LA everyone is looking for success, there are no pubs, you drive everywhere.

“I want to raise her profile so people remember her. She encapsulates the contradictions of being Welsh and being an actor and Welshness against the English establishment.”

Examining Roberts’ story she hopes that cultural lack of confidence won’t affect today’s actors, wherever they are from.

“What I loved about filming Torchwood in LA is that we were there and we are as good as anyone else in the world,” Sharon says.

“The story is about a world crisis so they can go where they want, but it’s still in Wales and as Welsh as can be. Wales and Cardiff are on a worldwide scale.

“There’s a huge US following for Torchwood and what’s exciting for me is that we are just as good as anybody.”

For Sharon, going to LA is just part of what has been a hugely successful career, although she says she regards herself as “lucky”.

She keeps saying she has been lucky to be able to raise two children single-handed and still work and lucky to have come to prominence at a time when there were few women actors working in the Welsh language. But all this must have also been down to hard work and talent.

Sharon, now 61, had her first child, Stefan, in an era when there was no childcare available so she relied on her mother and friends.

Stefan, now 31, was able to go with her when she filmed in Italy and Montreal, but she says she felt guilty when Saran had to get herself to high school when she was filming Belonging early in the morning.

Not that it seems to have put off either of her children. Stefan is now a television director and Saran wants to act.

“I am happy for Saran to follow in my footsteps. She’s been in BBC Jam and Casualty,” Sharon says.

“But I think it is different now. I have been very lucky. When I began very few people were working in Wales in Welsh. Things have worked out for me and I’ve hardly been out of work.

“I have brought up two children and been able to work from home and worked around the world in Russia, Italy, the USA and Canada.

“But as a working single mother there are whole swathes of possibilities you have to close the door on, but you manage with the help of friends. You find a way.”

For the next few weeks she’s looking forward to writing, saying she enjoys it as much as acting.

“Writing and acting are the same process in the way that you are getting under someone else’s skin,” she says.

“I’m lucky I can do both and there are very few women writing for the theatre in Welsh or English.”

She’s also looking forward to whatever projects arise after that.

“I am quite manic and always on the go, I’m very restless and get bored easily.

“And you have to take every opportunity. It’s the nature of freelance work. I thrive on adrenalin and risk. That’s why I love this business.”